Bellator has our attention. Now what?

Not so much the part where Muhammed Lawalwent off on the MMA media (although, hey, I can’t say there aren’t some valid criticisms in there) but rather the way he summed up Saturday night’s Bellator event.

“I feel like the theme of this whole card is people trying to come up,” Lawal said.

People, and maybe companies, too.

Who would have guessed that it would be a failed attempt at pay-per-view that would give Bellator its biggest opportunity to make a lasting, positive impression on fight fans? Theoretically, losing your main event ought to be a bad thing. Telling fans that you feel your product is no longer worth paying for, that too ought to be a bad thing. It really, really should.

And yet somehow it isn’t. Somehow Bellator took the negative attention surrounding a proposed pay-per-view event built around Tito Ortiz and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and turned it into just regular old attention. Not negative, not exactly overwhelmingly positive, but genuine, let’s-give-this-thing-a-chance interest. Now it just has to deliver.

The good news is, Bellator is heading into Saturday night with a surprising amount of good will from the fans. First we were told we’d have to pay, and this made us sad, perplexed and maybe a little angry. Then we were told we’d get it for free, and lo there was much rejoicing. We started to really feel like we were getting a deal.

Forget the fact that all of Bellator’s previous events up to this point have been free. Never mind that the first Michael Chandler-Eddie Alvarez fight was free. Having the price tag on this one suddenly yanked away makes it feel like a gift rather than the Bellator status quo.

And it is kind of a gift, or at least it will be if the Chandler-Alvarez rematch is anywhere near as good as the first fight. If the other fights on the card deliver, it could be the kind of night that propels Bellator into a brand-new future.

That’s the hard part, though – making the most of the opportunity. You need the fighters to handle that part, which means you need good fighters, good luck and good timing.

Bellator has the first one. Several of its most talented fighters, from Chandler and Alvarez to Lawal and Pat Curran, are packed onto this one card. As a result of that and the bizarre chain of events that somehow turned a bad idea into an unexpected break, Bellator has our attention now. The room is suddenly, eerily quiet, and everybody is looking that way.

In a situation like this, you get one chance to say something worth listening to. One chance, and who knows when or if you’ll ever get another.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is probably the greatest female fighter on the planet, which is a tremendous feat. So why are we seemingly so obsessed with arguing about whether she could beat up men?